| Mancon Post Partum

Missed you at the mancon, Jael! You woulda had fun and it wasn't the same without you.

That said, another great mancon in the books. Like every year, I got to try some awesome new games, some duds, and a bunch of games that were supposed to get played but totally didn't. There's always that weird gaming regret thing where you WISH certain games had hit the table (and maybe a few others didn't).

CHEERS: Los Vegas! I knew people would like it, but it's a hard sell, especially since 1. I don't have a legit copy 2. My bootleg copy was left at home 3. We played a copy cobbled together from Pandemic The Cure location tiles, Dave's ugly dice, and Elrock's awesome handwritten money!

JEERS: Pandemic The Cure - I really liked it the couple times I played it at home, but at mancon it fell flat for me. The first time we played it was alright, but I got in a 3 player game with Enron and Elrock, and we probably should have just played more Machi Koro.

CHEERS: Thunder Alley! Way funner than a GMT game should reasonably be, but don't worry, their less than stellar artwork was there. It actually didn't bum me out once we started playing, because it's just a totally fun and awesome racing game.

JEERS: Chili dogs! Enron made us delicious food as always, but I should have limited by chili dog consumption because goddamn, those are still kicking my ass a couple days later.

CHEERS: Telestrations, holy shit. The #1 Laugh-Out-Loud Party Game from USAOPOLY! It could have been horrible, but the first time we played it, I laughed harder than I've probably ever laughed in my life. Playing Cards Against Humanity AT Edition beforehand def helped get us in the mood, but the degenerate drawings that come out of our heads are pretty priceless.

JEERS: Lack of rotistier chickens. Also bummed we didn't play Shadows of Brimstone, IMPERIAL FRIGGIN ASSAULT, and a bunch of other stuff I'm not remembering.

Wish this trip was every 6 months, do it!

| After Action Report

Good times were had, as were chili dogs! It was great to come up on Thursday for once. Rude - thanks for the rides to and fro, and guys thanks for hauling my shit there and back. Much appreciated.

I highly enjoyed playing Thunder Alley, Cards Action Humanity, Rude's Weird Spy Location Game, Telestrations, Splendor, Puerto Rico, Istanbul, Chaos in the Old World, Pandemic: The Cure, "Los" Vegas, Relic, Mr. Jack Pocket, Doomtown, Dead of Winter, Runewars (although I did not expect it to take TEN HOURS! holy shit!), Telestrations again, and whatever I'm forgetting.

I mildly regret not having played Shadows of Brimstone, Crossfire, Netrunner, Risk Legacy, Small World, Saga (maybe later on in February in Santa Clara?), or seeing what this Arctic Chicken Avengers is all about, plus whatever else you guys think I should regret not playing.

Sorry ya couldn't make it Jael, I missed ya!

Welcome to the challenge, Matt! I dunno, 100 minis isn't really a challenge for you. What would? Maybe you should go for 500? A thousand?

Woo hoo!  I can never find the link to this blog...  But I've decided to sign on to the 10x10 challenge with my own custom rules: I can count painting minis.

I'm already done for the year.


But just for curiosity's sake, I think I will track games in Jon's nifty spreadsheet.  Not yet quite sure if my random choice of games is amendable to his spreadsheet, but I'll give it a try.


Do any of you track plays on boardgamegeek?  I've never done that, but play so infrequently these days, maybe it's a good way to track this stuff? 

I'll flip through the Steam Workshop again tonight. I was trying to pay attention to the comments on some of the mods regarding stability and all that. Maybe we can find something we both already know. I downloaded the Netrunner one (which I DON'T already know). Since that's a card game, maybe that'll be a good first one to try. There were a few different version of the Vladda game Tash Kalar, but I don't think either of us know that, and it might be too weird trying to learn a game in an awkward buggy environment.

Have you found anything you'd especially like to try on Tabletop Simulator, Rude? We should give it a shot one of these evenings. I was having a lot of weird graphic bugs on OS X, but I can switch over to Windows and see if it performs better.

| Holy...

I picked up Tabletop Simulator on Steam and I'm going through the 65+ pages in the Steam Workshop and it's like when we all first discovered Napster but for boardgames... it's every game I've ever owned plus every single one old and new I want to try.

Now, I know it'll never replace playing games in person, but dammit, it'll do in a pinch a lot of the time. We gotta try some of it out! (I found the Star Wars dice in there, so we're ready for the next session!)

EDIT: After loading up a bunch of modules (the old Aliens game with the standup guys!), it's cool, but it's basically like a 3D vassal mod with physics. I like it, but you're still at the mercy of who scanned (or more commonly took assets from VASSAL mods) and if rules/functions were able to be approximated in the system. Pretty cool!

| 10x10

Here's my plays for the year so far (pretty much all short games):

I'll start filling in the J's spreadsheet, but my tentative list is:

1960: The Making of the President
Castles of Burgundy
Trajan
Lord of the Rings LCG
Robinson Crusoe
Pandemic The Cure (this one's pretty fun!)
Forbidden Desert (kinda hard right now)
Friday (the solo game I'm horrible at)
Rivals of Catan
Flashpoint Fire Rescue (any map BUT the original map? That could be funish)

| 10x10 list

Hey fellas, I put a link to my 10 x 10 list here. It's editable, so you guys feel free to jump in and add your own on separate tabs if you like. There are a couple of duplicates already.

I ended up with a mix of classic and new stuff:
1. Warmachine/Hordes
2. Saga
3. Deadzone
4. Twilight Struggle (swapped Mage Knight out for this)
5. Agricola
6. Galaxy Trucker
7. Shadows of Brimstone
8. Doomtown
9. RPGs
10. Paint 100 minis challenge

I got a cribbage app. I don't think I like cribbage! I don't think I understand it much either. Sometimes I score more points than the computer. Most of the time I don't. Nobs.

| No Progress to Report

My team has been in town this past week at work so I have been on site all three days so far.  4:30am wake up, in by 6am, on the road home at around 8pm head hits the pillow at around 9pm.  Rinse repeat.  Bullshit 14 -16 hours days is for the birds.

Needless to say, this has put a dent in my 10x10.

Normans look rad! Go for it!

I personally think part of your goal should be entering a mini at GenCon this year because I bet you could place for sure it not win outright.

I'm mightily tempted by this 100 minis challenge. If I paint my Saga army and my SoB cores alone, that would almost cover it right there - I could paint a few other outstanding warcasters/solos and be done. Hmm. It actually sounds really doable.

| battle cribbage

On one of the vlogs I watch at work, they're doing gamer resolutions for this year and a lot of people are also doing the 10x10 challenge (posers). The host brings up that in past years when he's done that, he's sometimes discovered that having to play a game a 6th or 7th time, he'd realize he really didn't like the game that much. Like you can discover that games you imagine you really like, are kind of irritating as you explore them further. I hope we discover some games we didn't know we hate too! (Looking at you, Battle Cribbage).

Then the lady who invented the 10x10 challenge is this year doing someone's 2x2x12 challenge where you play 2 unplayed games twice in a month. She said a similar thing can happen with just a second play of a game, where it goes from liked to unliked. That's too many unplayed games to buy, so I'll stick to 10x10, thank you very much!

Elrock: bring your Cribbage decks and minis! I've never played it, but if it's not too long, it could be fun to try.

GW: Roll a 1 phase, indeed!

| Because, Games Workshop

"Why doesn't GW just put the game out again, in like a more modern style of packaging?"

"...the ability to buy complete teams at reasonable prices"

GW's business model, for at least 15 years, has been laser focused on getting people to spend lots and lots of cash putting together 40K armies, WHFB armies, buying the related rule books ($70+ each), and painting supplies. Anything distracting from that is a non-starter. It's actually somewhat miraculous that they rereleased Space Hulk.

For a long time they had some minimal support through the specialist game subsection on their site but that's gone now.

Their bread and butter is 40K which is still the big dog of minis wargames. WHFB sales have been in the shitter for a long time, though. It wasn't even in the top 5 in the last list I looked at which was for 2013 - I'll add a link when I'm not on my phone but that list had top minis game as

40k

Star Wars X-wing

Warmachine

Star Trek

Hordes (which is the same game as WM so it's weird they're tracked separately but w/e)

Hopefully they release 2014 data soon.